[LAU] Heads Up :)

On 10/07/10 16:34, James Morris wrote:
>> Compiling a customized (real-time patched) kernel makes sense, but
>> ardour and friends are available from Debian.
>> But how up to date are they, I like to get the latest tarballs (and
> sometimes SVN) as soon as I notice them.
The debian-mm team (Free, Adrian, Alessio, et al) are doing an amazing
job. Usually 10-20 days behind upstream. The 10 days is the minimum
time for a package to enter Debian/testing.
For example: ardour is latest 2.8.11-3; qtractor in debian/testing is
2.4.6-2 but debian/unstable already offers 2.4.7 (since Monday).
If you want bleeding-edge SVN - fine; but for a reliable studio i will
recommend against it: It's in fact often easier to get it wrong by
missing an
./configure --enable-tricky-optimizations
option or sth. besides not all software supports proper un-installation.
Although you should be fine with the gentoo pro-audio-overlay.
I build quite a a lot of SW from source: either for testing or for
contributing to development on it. For some projects it works to simply
copy the official 'debian/' folder into the SVN or git checkout and do a
backport this way.
However for serious work I [almost] always use the officially packaged
version.
> There has been a few times in the past when after performing an update
> (I always use aptitude - I press u for update and the + on updated
> packages section to mark them for install, and then g to download and
> install).
my usual workflow: `sudo aptitude`
u (update) U (mark upgradable)
(in case of dependency issues:) e < > r a ! (the "Resolver" menu)
(press <Enter> on a package or cycle windows with <TAB> & scroll down to
select individual versions for each package)
g (go and install)
>>> I'm just wondering if it's getting any easier these days, ie, is there
>>> still much work to do, and is updating still a nightmare? (I used to
>>> sometimes find I was better off doing a new install).
>>>> Nightmare? quite the opposite. I've migrated the same Debian system over
>> 4 laptops in the last ~7 years without re-installing. If you roll Debian
>> packages for custom compiled software (or use backports) it's a piece of
>> cake.
>> That's something I never looked into. I hear a similar thing can be
> done in Gentoo...
I don't doubt it.
As with most things on GNU/Linux; it's a bit of a steep learning curve
in the beginning but pays off quickly after that.
I can't help you with Gentoo. On Debian it can be as easy as running
dh_make - or just copy & edit some examples. After you did it once it's
a < 5 min task but well worth it.
Once /usr/bin , /usr/lib , etc is cluttered it's very hard to clean it
up again and a new install is often faster.
>> With apt-pinning it's possible to run a mixed system
>> stable/testing/unstable and aptitude's dependency resolver just rocks.
>> I only use 'stable' for servers though and stick to "A constantly usable
>> testing distribution for Debian" ( http://lwn.net/Articles/406301/ ) for
>> A/V Desk/Mac/Lap-tops.
>> I have never heard of apt-pinning before, it looks a bit dangerous
>http://jaqque.sbih.org/kplug/apt-pinning.html
It's a nice introduction and walk-though, isn't it?
Dangerous? Which part of it?
I can assure you: it won't blow up or hurt you or your system in any way
- Just beware of locusts: http://xkcd.org/797/ :)
Cheers!
robin